Mancala World
Register
Advertisement
Kalawacki
Inventors: Sandra Aleksieva,
Jenny Arrsjö Cederlund, Daniel
Björk, Markus Dahlström, Henrik
Vrenning, 2005
Variant of Dakon
Ranks: Two
Sowing: Single laps
Region: Sweden

Kalawacki was designed by the Swedish students Sandra Aleksieva, Jenny Arrsjö Cederlund, Daniel Björk, Markus Dahlström and Henrik Vrenning in 2005. It is a variant of Kalah, which involves luck. The game was a project assignment for a media design seminar of the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University. Kalawacki features "cannibals from the darkest parts of Africa", "the best ballerinas in the world", "angry American veterans from the war in the Persian bay", "the best sumo teams in Japan", Hippies who are the "absolute happiest people alive" and "Europe’s most dangerous hooligans" (quoting Jenny Arrsjö Cederlund).

Rules

Kalawacki-start-p

Initial Position as of Game Demo

The game is played like Kalah except for the following differences:

  • Initially each cell has six cards (known as "characters"), which either depict a soldier, cannibal, ballet dancer, hippie, sumo fighter or hooligan. No start position was given in the written rules, but the game demo (a Java applet) always begins with the set-up shown on the right (6 cards of the same type in each cell). The cells are called "ambo", the stores are named "kalaha" and the seeds are known as "characters".
  • A stack of cards is distributed, one by one, starting with the bottom card and ending with the topmost card.
  • After the regular turn is finished, the player throws a dice and then performs a special action depending on the face value of the dice and the card he sowed last.
Character Pictogram Actions related to face value
Ballet Dancer
Ballet1
1- She kicks out the other characters of her ambo.
2 - She and the other characters of her ambo dance to the following cell.
3 - She commits suicide because she broke her toe.
4-6 - Nothing happens.
Cannibal
Cannibal1
1 - He eats another character in the ambo, if there is one.
2 - He eats everybody else in his ambo.
3 - He eats himself.
4-6 - Nothing happens.
Hippie
Hippie1
1 - After smoking pot with all the others in the ambo they all fly to the next cell.
2 - He takes crack and dies.
3 - Sex party. Move one character from each cell of the same row into the Hippie's ambo.
4-6 - Nothing happens.
Hooligan
Hooligan1
1 - He provokes a fight with the others in his ambo and gets killed.
2 - He kicks someone from his ambo to the opposite side.
3 - He throws Molotov cocktails into his ambo. The others run 10 ambos forward.
4-6 - Nothing happens.
Soldier
Soldier1
1 - Everyone in the ambo is shooted.
2 - A grenade is thrown into the opposite ambo, which is vaporized (i.e. the cell does no
longer exist in the game).
3 - The soldier swallows a grenade (i.e. commits suicide).
4-6 - Nothing happens.
Sumo
Sumo1
1 - After winning a fight the Sumo wants to celebrate. He is moved to the closest Hippie.
2 - The others of his ambo die because he sits on them.
3 - He flies to the opposite ambo because someone punctured his stomach.
4-6 - Nothing happens.

Any charakter that dies is removed from the game. It is not counted as a capture or put in the players' stores.

Notes

Jenny Arrsjö Cederlund called the American game "Kalaha" (which is actually its Swedish and German name) and erroneously claimed it to be Egyptian. She is also mistaken when she writes: "The characters (i.e. seeds) remaining on the opposite side are collected and placed in the winners Kalaha pit (i.e. store)." In fact, the remaining counters are won by the player who owns their pits no matter whether he wins or loses the game.

External Links

Copyright

© Ralf Gering
Under the CC by-sa 2.5 license.

Advertisement